Streaming is a technology which is used for storing, transmitting and broadcasting packetised digital data, e.g. for audio and video broadcasting services. Often additional information is provided as an added value accompanying the audio and video data stream. For example, video summaries, story boards, cast background information, advertisements etc. are transmitted together with the streaming media as metadata. Metadata is defined as ‘data about data’. In multimedia applications, metadata typically are data about audiovisual (AV) data, these AV data often being called ‘essence’.
When recording such a broadcast audio and video (AV) data stream together with metadata on storage media like Blue-ray Disc (BD) it becomes necessary to link the metadata to the AV stream. This is also true for manually added metadata. As an example, a user may want to link a short biography about J. Dean pulled from the internet to the AV of the movie “East of Eden”. The link may be desirable to point to a special scene within the movie when J. Dean is starting the car race ending at the cliffs.
Metadata are data about data giving additional information about the recorded material whereas providing a link to the AV stream and/or other related metadata described. A typical example is a movie summary giving background information about an AV stream recorded having a link that allows starting the AV stream on request. Furthermore it could also have further links to metadata describing the live of the movie actors.
Typically metadata are produced by professional content providers like DVB broadcasters, internet services of television news papers.